AFTERMATH OF THE "9-11" TERRORIST ATTACK

EVENTS AFTER THE SECOND WEEK

Introduction:

To find out the latest political, economic, and human aspects of the
terrorist attack, we recommend that you visit CNN,
MSNBC or similar news web sites.

Here, we will collect some of the off-beat developments that you otherwise may not
have seen on regular news outlets.

Second week after the attack:

Internet religious activity:

Yep.com, a division of WebSideStory, monitors Internet traffic
in dozens of categories; one of these is religion. They monitor the number of
visitors to this site's most popular essays. During August, they rated our site,
ReligiousTolerance.org as the most-visited religious web site on the
Internet. We had averaged about 6,000 visitors per day.

After the terrorist attack, we sank to second place; the most-visited site
was the Rapture Ready Message Board. 1
Apparently, a lot of people were interpreting the terrorist attack as a prelude
to the end of the world. The rapture is a concept
followed by many conservative Christians that Jesus will return towards the
Earth. Born-again Christians, both dead and alive, will float through the air to
meet him in the sky. We observed a remarkable change to our essays which dealt
with end-time predictions. They rose from a position of relative obscurity to
become our most popular essays.

A week after the attack, the British web site "About Islam and Muslims"
has become the most popular religious site on the Internet according to Yep.com.
2 A lot of people appear to be curious about the religion of
Islam. This site is second. The traffic to our most popular essays has doubled
since August. The Rapture Ready site is third.

Bookstore activity:

Eight days after the attack, some New York book stores, like Strand Bookstore
Annex and Trinity Bookshop remain closed. 3 "Many are
already putting up displays of titles that might help customers; others have
memorialized the victims and their families and friends in touching ways. Sales
have been erratic, and titles about the World Trade Center towers and terrorism
have been popular." Barnes & Noble noted "that books with religious or
spiritual content enjoyed the greatest sales increase in the days following the
attack." 3 Operations manager Jonas Johnson at Powell's,
in Portland, OR, noted that their "Middle Eastern section" He also
observed that "at one point, half the customers in the store were clustered
around the Nostradamus books." A sales associate in WaldenBooks in Watertown
NY remarked that their entire stock of Nostradamus books dissapeared quickly on
the day of the attack.

A bookseller at Books Inc., in San Francisco, CA, commented that many of the
books in demand are either not released or on back order. 4

Sikhs appeal for understanding:

The Khalistan Affairs Centre issued a plea to the American media to
educate the public about Sikhism. It was signed by 31 Sikh groups -- mostly by
Gurdwaras (Sikh places of worship).

"American media's performance following last week's horrendous suicidal
terrorist attacks in New York and Virginia has been excellent. But, as far as
the half million strong law-abiding Sikh American community is concerned the
September 15, 2001 cold-blooded murder - a hate-crime - of a fellow Sikh
American, Balbir Singh Sodhi, 52, in Meza, Arizona, (and one hundred ninety
other hatred-filled-crimes against Sikhs all across the U.S. in just one week)
have proved that the great American journalist and editor, Walter Lippmann
(1889-1974), was right. He had warned in his book 'The Public Philosophy' that;
'When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses
of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion.'
"

Many members of the public have confused Sikhs with Muslims, because both often
wear beards and turbans. "Sikh Americans have been abused and roughed up,
their cars and businesses have been vandalized, Sikh places of worship (called
Gurdwaras) have been attacked and now one innocent Sikh has been murdered...The
Sikh Americans are patriotic and law-abiding citizens who have vehemently
condemned last week's terrorism and have extended their sympathy and support to
the families of the innocent victims of the dastardly acts of cold-blooded
murder." They appeal to the media to educate the American population about
Sikhism. 13

The Khalistan Affairs Centre is an separatist organization which is
promoting a separate country for Sikhs.

Books people are buying:

Publishers Weekly collected the names of books that have been selling well:

On terrorism:

Yossef Bodansky, "Bin Laden," Prima,

Ramzi Yousef,The New Jackals:

Simon Reeve, "Osama Bin Laden and the Future of Terrorism,"
Northeastern University Press,

Jessica Stern, "Ultimate Terrorist," Harvard University

On the World Trade Center:

Angus Kress Gillespie, "Twin Towers: The Life of New York City's
World Trade Center," Rutgers University Press,

Eric Darton, "Divided We Stand: A Biography of New York City's
World Trade," Basic Books,

On how to interact with children about violence:

Dominic Cappello, "Ten Talks Parents Must Have with Their Children
about Violence," Hyperion,

Barbara Coloroso, "Parenting through Crisis: Helping Kids in Times
of Loss, Grief and Change," HarperInformation,

Margaret M. Holmes, "A Terrible Thing Happened: A Story for
Children Who Have Witnessed Violence or Trauma," American
Psychological Association,

Nostradamus hoax:

Nostradamus (1503-1566) was a 16th century French physician, occultist and alchemist. He
is famous for writing 1,100 quatrains in archaic French. They are believed by some to
foretell the future. The following quatrain has been circulating via Email:

In the city of York there will be a great collapse
Two twin brothers torn apart by chaos.
While the fortress falls the great leader will succumb
Third big war will begin when the big city is burning.

Nostradamus 1654.

Sounds impressive. However, it is a hoax. He never wrote it. One
good indicator is that he died in 1566. The quatrain actually originated in an
essay written by Neil Marshall, a student at Brock University in Canada, back in
the 1990s. He wrote the passage in order to demonstrate how any obscure verse
will be interpreted to fit just about any historical event. The final line was
added recently. 8

"Two steel birds will fall from the sky on the Metropolis.
The sky will burn at forty-five degrees latitude.
Fire approaches the great new city.
Immediately a huge, scattered flame leaps up.
Within months, rivers will flow with blood.
The undead will roam the earth for little time."

There are also some problems with this passage:

It is not in the quatrain format the Nostradamus wrote.

New York City lies at about 40°
North Latitude, not the 45° mentioned in
this passage.

Steel was not widely used until about two centuries after
Nostradamus' death.

WTC attack foretold:

Preston Online reports that psychic Valerie Clarke forecast the WTC
attack back in 2001-JUN. She made the prediction on the British Broadcasting
Corporation's television program "Kilroy Show." Mrs Clarke, 30, of Old Bridge
Way, Chorley, UK told "presenter Robert Kilroy Silk that she had a vision of
a massive explosion caused by a plane crashing into the second tower in
Manhattan." 4

Unwise language:

Reuters reported that a conversation between U.S. Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld and a reporter may result in a change to the name of the Pentagon's
attack plan "Operation Infinite Justice." Apparently no one in the
Defense Department consulted Muslims when they chose the name. "...several
Islamic scholars objected to the name on the ground that only God, or Allah, can
mete out infinite justice in their view." 5

In one of President Bush's speeches, he called on a "crusade against
terrorism." In North America, the term "crusade" simply means a
program or organized effort. Billy Graham's evangelistic drives in many cities
worldwide have been called "crusades" for many decades. But for Muslims,
the term triggers memories of atrocities committed by Christian armies which
roamed across Europe in the Middle Ages. They killed hundreds of thousands of
defenseless Jews on their way to the Middle East. Once there, they slaughtered
countless Muslims and Jews in acts of great barbarism. The memory is still
strong.

Representative John Cooksey (R-LA) referred to Muslims on a Louisiana radio
network: "If I see someone come in that's got a diaper on his head and a fan
belt wrapped around the diaper on his head, that guy needs to be pulled over."
6 He later apologized for his statement.

Fundraising:

Andy Shallal runs Shallal's own Skewers and Luna Grill in Washington
DC. He has organized a campaign among the owners of 7,000 restaurants who form
the Restaurant
Association of Metropolitan Washington. The goal is to raise as much as five
million dollars by having next
Monday's entire proceeds donated to charities who provide victim relief. He
said: "I'm just tired of being depressed, and I wanted to do something."
Shallal, 46, was born in Iraq, came to the U.S. thirty years ago, and has become
an American citizen.
6

Reincarnation by cloning:

Claude Vorilhon, 54, known as Rael to his followers, is the leader of a new
religious movement, the Raelians. 7 It is a UFO related group
with over 55,000 members in 84 countries. Their headquarters is near Montreal,
Quebec. He suggests that DNA be recovered both from the victims and the
perpetrators of the terrorist attack. He proposes that all be cloned. He said: "If
we can bring back to life the victims, that will be wonderful for the families."
Meanwhile, the terrorists can be "judged and punished like they deserve to be
punished."
6 Unfortunately, clones of the victims might have bodies
similar to the people who died, but not their personalities and memories. The
concept of trying a clone in a court of law for a crime that was committed
before his birth raises some troubling ethical issues.

Recommendations about use of language:

The Religion Newswriters Association passed a resolution saying that
it was "troubled" by extensive use of terms such as "Islamic terrorist."
They also rejected "similar phrases that associate an entire religion with
the action of a few." Reporters should "avoid stereotypes [and] be aware
of the complexity of religious traditions and to use care in attempting to
describe the motives of terrorists."

Ingrid Mattson, vice president of the Islamic Society of North America,
said that "Terrorism is a tactic, a strategy. It's not an ideology." She
notes that terrorists themselves use the term "Islamic terrorist," and
that news organizations need simple terms for their headlines and stories. She
recommends that Muslims and the U.S. media Americanize certain Muslim terms, by
using the name God instead of Allah and scarf instead of hijab. She also agrees
with many Muslim scholars that "jihad" means defensive war.

Third week after the attack:

Sponsored link:

A Global Psychic Experiment:

Well known Druidic authority, Isaac Bonewits, notes that "there are
thousands of people with psychic abilities in America and elsewhere in the world
who are wondering how to fight terrorism in general and Osama bin Laden in
particular. Here is one possible way that might also produce some scientifically
useful data." He has asked psychics around the world to use their psychic or
divinatory skills to sense Osama bin Lauden's location on OCT-2 (Full Moon),
OCT-9 (4th Quarter), and OCT-16 (Dark/New Moon), and to Email the results back
to him. 10

Nation Review fires columnist:

Ann Coulter was a National Review columnist. On National Review
Online, she suggested that because of the terrorist attacks, "We should
invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
The editor of the web site later refused to run a follow-up column in which
Coulter suggested: "We should require passports to fly domestically.
Passports can be forged, but they can also be checked with the home country in
case of any suspicious-looking swarthy males." National Review Online
Editor Jonah Goldberg said: "We didn't feel we wanted to be associated with
the comments expressed in those two columns. We got a lot of complaints from
sponsors and a lot of complaints from readers left, right and center. We've
decided for editorial reasons we think are sound that we're no longer going to
run Ann Coulter's syndicated column."

She linked herself to Rev. Jerry Falwell and Bill Maher.
Falwell blamed the attack on Pagans, abortion
providers, civil libertarians and homosexuals seeking equality; he later
apologized. Maher was host of the TV program "Politically Incorrect." He
called U.S. troops "cowards" for bombing from afar. He also later
apologized.

Frank Rich, a columnist for the New York Times said she was fueling "hysteria
on the right." Alex Beam, of the Boston Globe, called her a "right-wing
telebimbo." Columnist Tom Brazaitis of the Cleveland Plain Dealer
accused her of "bloodthirsty rhetoric."

Proof of Osama bin Laden's involvement in the terrorist attack:

On 2001-OCT-2, Ambassador-at-Large Francis X. Taylor, head of
counterterrorism at the State Department, supplied NATO and other allies with
proof that bin Laden and his group were responsible for the terrorist attacks.
NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson said that "The facts are clear and
compelling...The information presented points conclusively to an al-Qaida role
in the Sept. 11 attacks...We know that the individuals who carried out these
attacks were part of the worldwide terrorist network of al-Qaida, headed by
Osama bin Laden and his key lieutenants and protected by the Taliban''
government in Afghanistan. Since the attack came from outside of NATO, the
attacks are covered under NATO's Article 5, which says that an attack on one
member is an attack on all. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, addressing a
Labor Party congress, also accused bin Laden. "Be in no doubt, bin Laden and
his people organized this atrocity.'' He calling the Taliban government "a
regime founded on fear and funded by the drugs trade.'' He challenged it to
"surrender the terrorists or surrender power, that is your choice.'' 11

National Scarves for Solidarity Campaign:

This campaign is very simple: Women, regardless of their faith, across the
United States will wear a scarf or hat covering their hair on 2001-OCT-8. Like
friends who shave their heads in solidarity with cancer patients, women
everywhere are asked to wear the hijab (scarf). To protect Muslim women who have
been afraid to leave their houses because of ignorant hatred, we will dress
piously. The hijab is worn outwardly to show the inner hijab of compassion,
honesty, and love, which is carried in the hearts and souls of Islamic men and
women alike....it is not meant to be a political symbol in any way, just a
symbol of love. 12

Three weeks and later, after the attack:

Yahoo group "Islam Denounces Terrorism" formed:

"Terrorism is a crime against humanity. It is a brutal attack on innocent
people. Islam is a religion that means "peace". In the Koran, the Holy Book of
Islam, God commands believers to bring peace and security to the world.
Terrorism and all other mischief on Earth are the very acts that Muslims are
commanded by God to stand against.

The Islamic morality is the cure for terrorism, not the source of it.
Those who resort to or support terrorism in the name of Islam are in a great
error. They are committing a crime which God has cursed in the Koran. All true
Muslims denounce terrorism of any kind, and share the sorrows of its victims."

Increase in post-disaster bonding:

Kate Wachs, director of the Relationship Center in Chicago, and author
of "Relationships for Dummies," reports that her dating service has seen
a 30% increase in applications since the terrorist attacks. She commented: "People
are thinking, 'if the world is going to blow up, I'd rather have a partner than
be alone.' "

Bot Wachs and Jeff Michaelson, a psychologist and board-certified sexologist
in McLean, IL have noticed that their couple clients are bickering less than
usual. Ms. Wachs said: "People are appreciating their partners more."
14

Arab-owned grocery store torched:

The Eagle Mini Mart in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, was firebombed on
OCT-11. There is no evidence that would prove that the store was attacked
because it was owned by a Muslim. But, there had been some anti-Muslim and
anti-Arab sentiments on the Islands. "Callers to radio shows have suggested a
boycott of Arab-owned businesses. On one occasion, a sign reading 'Arabs Go
Home, Killers All' was placed in front of an Arab-owned store on the main island
of St. Thomas... 15

Christian and Muslim groups enter dialog:

Members of the United Methodist Commission on Christian Unity and
Interreligious Concerns visited the Islamic Center of Southern California
on OCT-12. The staff of the Muslim Public Affairs Council was also
involved.

Salam Al-Marayati, the Muslim Public Affairs Council director, called it
a "historic day" and expressed appreciation for the support ... The two
faith groups noted their common roots, along with the Jews, in the faith of
Abraham.

They issued a statement in which they expressed grief over the events of Sept.
11. "We have all been painfully reminded that there are those in our world
who choose evil over good, the ways of death over life, and hostility over
harmony. Together, we condemn terrorism. Together, we commend justice and peace
as God's will for the world...We join voices against all forms of racism and
anti-Muslim, anti-Jewish and anti-Christian attitudes and practices, wherever
they occur. We unite in our prayers for the victims of terrorism and their loved
ones; for the courageous rescuers; for the leaders of the nations; and for all
who stand in harm's way this day...While our faith traditions have clear
differences, we share the common commitment to living together, under God, in
the unity of mutual respect and compassion...We invite others to join in this
commitment." 16

Sending back the demons:

Pagan priestess Deborah Lipp has widely
distributed a note to Witches,
Druids, and [ceremonial] Magicians. It comments on the terrorist attack. "They
made a blood sacrifice in the name of their deity, sacrificing their own lives
and murdering thousands to achieve a 'religious' goal of extreme evil. We know
that physically, they achieved many of their goals -- the World Trade Center was
destroyed. I believe that they succeeded magically as well."

"This immense blood sacrifice, this outpouring of evil and death, has opened
a gate, and negative energies have poured through that gate. Forces that you
might call 'demonic' have been drawn to us. They must be sent back!" She
recommends that on Samhain, 2001-OCT-31, that Neopagans send "the energies of
negativity and destruction" back to the other side.

Muslim-Christian riots kill at least 100 in Nigeria:

On 2001-OCT-12, after Friday prayers by Muslims, a quiet demonstration
against the U.S. action in Afghanistan turned violent. One to two hundred people
are believed to have been killed; many hundreds were injured; four churches and
four mosques were gutted; 16,000 have been made homeless.

Previously, in 2000-FEB, 2000-MAY, and 2001-SEP, a total of 1,700 people were
killed during riots that were sparked by the decision in Northern Nigeria to
implement full Islamic Shari'ah law in this country which has a large Christian
minority.

Victim assistance:

In late 2001-SEP, Congress passed a bill to financially bailout the airline industry.
Attached to that bill was an amendment which established a fund to compensate
victims and victims' families for personal injury and death. It is administered
by the Justice Department. Unfortunately, the bill did not define what group of
individuals constitutes
a family. Some gay and lesbian groups are asking the Justice Department to
include the partners and children of homosexuals as potential recipients of
payments. Similar funds administered by the Red Cross and the state of New York
have decided to grant benefits to partners of gay and lesbian visitors. But
Virginia considered only married spouses and children as recipients. Kenneth Feinberg has been
appointed to be a Special Master; he is to decide how the funds are to be
distributed. Conservative Christians are concerned that partners of gay and
lesbian victims of the 9-11 terrorist attack might be given financial benefits.
As the Family Research Council stated in a news release: "While it might seem harmless to give financial benefits to a
homosexual victim's partner, in reality it is one more step
toward equating homosexual behavior and relationships with the traditional,
married family." 17

Arab students return to campus:

Many nervous Middle-Eastern students at American Universities quickly
returned to their countries of origin after the 9-11 attack. They feared a
violent backlash from fellow students and other Americans. This included many
students from Washington State University. But, starting in 2002-JAN, most have
quietly returned to their studies, meshing in quietly with fellow students.

Gallup Poll published:

A Gallup Poll published in late 2002-FEB involved the survey of almost 10,000
Muslims in nine nations around the world. Some results were:

77% said that U.S. military actions in Afghanistan were not morally
justified.

61% believe that Arab terrorists were not responsible for the 9-11
attacks.

Large majorities in all countries polled harbored an unfavorable
opinion of the U.S.